


move forward

by kermiethefrog



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Sam is a ghost, This shit is sad I'm sorry what can I say, set during season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26434756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kermiethefrog/pseuds/kermiethefrog
Summary: Prompt: Sam died during Stanford but comes back as a ghost, being able to even fool people into thinking that he's alive, even believing it himself and even fooling Dean when he comes to Stanford. But at some point, Dean (and Sam) have to face the truth.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37
Collections: Supernatural Summergen 2020





	move forward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnotherWriterWhoWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherWriterWhoWrites/gifts).



> Written for AnotherWriterWhoWrites for Summergen 2020.

It’s in the early hours of the morning and the coastal sea breeze chills straight through Dad’s leather jacket. Dean hasn’t seen his little brother in over four years, and Sam looks exactly the same as he did when he left. Taller, maybe, a little thinner; paler and sheet-white, but that might just be the circumstances they’ve found themselves in. The moonlight that cuts into the room from the gauzy curtained windows frames Sam as nearly untouchable, but Dean is nothing if not persistent.  
  
When Dean has Sam pinned, Sam’s skin feels icy to the touch, even if his breath comes out hard and incredulous. He feels distant, almost like he’s not underneath Dean’s hands at all, like he could fade away. Dean’s nearly gotten himself killed a dozen times trying to give Sam a fighting chance in this world, and now it’s like Sam’s glassy eyes don’t even register him.  
  
The light comes on a few seconds later, once they’ve righted themselves, and Sam looks flushed and alert. Alive. Dean looks into his little brother’s face and sees the same kid that used to complain about who got the bed closest to the AC unit at mid-case motel rooms, and feels bold enough to ask him along to find Dad.  
  
The heater’s fritzing again when they pile into the car. It’s been going on and off for the past two months, ever since Dad went off on his own, and Dean’s been too busy to take a real look at it. It freezes his ass off the entire ride to Jericho, and then they find themselves in the middle of a haunting.  
  
\---  
  
Sam barely sleeps, rarely eats; if he has a substantial meal, Dean doesn’t see it. Sammy has nightmares that echo out in Dean’s ears, piercing whatever sleep Dean can get. Dean knows what depression looks like. The days after he drops off Sam back at his place and drags him out of the fire again are the worst, but Sam seems intent on killing whatever hellspawn comes crawling out from the cracks.  
  
They don’t talk about it, so Dean just puts a gun in Sam’s hand and lets him get to work.  
  
\---  
  
Dean flicks the lightswitch, and the overhead light flickers a few times with uncertainty before staying on with a low hum. It’s happened at the last motel they stayed at, too, and the thought makes Dean unsettled, but not nervous enough to bring it up.  
  
“Hey,” Sam says; Dean throws his duffel on the bag closest to the door and glances over his shoulder at his brother. “M’gonna grab ice. Need anything? There was a vending machine in the lobby.”  
  
Dean shakes his head and offers a short, “Nah,” in response. Sam gives him a wondering look that Dean steadfastly ignores before he departs. It’s been a tense month between them, but Dean hadn’t been expecting a perfect family reunion. He had hoped, sure. Dreams about it some nights, but he hasn’t forgotten how Sam’s throat was so torn up from screaming half the time in the month before he left for California. He knows that it’ll take time for Sam to come around.  
  
Reaching into his duffel, Dean feels around for hard plastic edges and draws out the EMF meter. It takes a second to turn on, but once it’s reading, he runs it over Dad’s jacket and journal. For all the shit they’d done, all the shit Dad had killed or run through or written down, the meter barely even moves. There’s some level of comfort there; if Dad’s gone, then at least there’s no trace of him lingering behind.  
  
 _If_ Dad is gone. Dean hopes more than anything that he’s not.  
  
He sweeps the room, checks out the bathroom and the mini fridge—nothing reads anything more than a low hum, and Dean lets out a frustrated sigh between his teeth. He glances across the room and his eyes stop on Sam’s duffel.  
  
If Sam has anything of Jess’ in his bag—  
  
It feels a little fucked up to test it—Sam’s girlfriend has only been dead three and a half weeks, and Sammy’s been struggling through every minute—but Dean has a sinking feeling in his chest and not much time left before his brother comes back into the room. He waves the EMF over towards Sam’s duffel and holds his breath.  
  
The meter goes haywire, and Dean feels sick.  
  
By the time Sam comes back into the room, the EMF is turned off, packed away. Sam looks like shit—exhausted, pale, unfocused, and barely standing—so he goes to shower, and then goes to bed almost immediately afterwards, curled on his side away from Dean’s view.  
  
Dean knows Sam won’t get any sleep. He thinks he knows why, now, too. Neither of them get much sleep that night.  
  
\---  
  
A week passes before it becomes too much to bear. Temperature drops, lights flickering, the air tense like a wire ready to snap; Dean sees the omens everywhere, now, and he only knows that they’re gonna get worse the longer he waits.  
  
“You gotta burn whatever is keeping her here,” Dean says quietly; the force of his anger is nearly enough to make him grab Sam by the shoulders and scream at him, but his little brother looks gaunt, like he’s barely able to sit up. Sam draws his eyes over—they stare, glassy-eyed, straight into Dean’s throat. “She’s killing you, man.”  
  
“What?” Sam tries. His voice is almost too raspy, but Dean grits his teeth anyway.  
  
“She’s haunting us. She’s haunting you. Whatever shit you’re keeping of hers—”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
Dean stares back.  
  
“I couldn’t grab anything of hers before you came in.”  
  
Dean hasn’t seen Sam eat in over a month. He hasn’t seen Sam sleep since he picked him up to find Dad. There’s a chill that runs down his spine—Sam’s been depressed, he hasn’t been well since Jess died—but he seemed unwell before then, too, didn’t he? When Dean pinned him down in his living room?  
  
Dean’s mouth goes dry, and Sam’s eyes draw up, finally looking at him.  
  
“Why?”  
  
\---  
  
They’re in Kentucky fighting a ghoul when Sam gets stabbed, right in the center of his back between his shoulder blades. Sam opens his mouth to scream, and Dean watches, horrified. He aims the shotgun between the ghoul’s eyes and blows its brains out—right where Sam had been standing before, right before he flickered.  
  
Sam flickers back into existence, two feet to the left. The pain in Dean’s chest is nearly enough to bowl him over; the look in Sam’s eyes, terrified, like a ten year old on his first hunt, is nearly enough to kill him.  
  
“Sammy,” Dean manages, and Sam flickers again.  
  
\---  
  
They walk from the five mile marker in a near straight line and find the body half a mile into the woods.  
  
“I was hitchhiking,” Sam starts, “and a guy picked me up. Green hatchback. Said he was going to Las Vegas.”  
  
Dean can’t look at Sam; instead, he falls to his knees at the feet of the corpse, unable to look it in the face while his brother keeps talking, like he’s in a trance.  
  
“It started pouring, like, storm shower, pouring down so hard I could barely see through the windshield. The guy started getting nervous and upset. He was cursing a lot. Then he pulled over on the side of the road.”  
  
The day that Sam left was the hottest day in the summer. Dean remembers everything about that day: the resolute tone in Dad’s voice as he refused to let Dean go searching, the cold weight of his phone in his palm as he waited for Sam to call, the way his sweat coated the collar of his shirt as he lied awake regretting not trying harder to make Sam stay. It was the worst day of Dean’s life. In the next few months, Dean thought up every way Sam could have died and the crushing weight of never knowing haunted him.  
  
“He had a gun in the middle compartment. I tried to grab it away from it, and we fought for a bit. I punched him in the nose, and he smashed his head against his window. So I got out the car and started running. I heard him screaming through the rain. He shot me, but I kept running.”  
  
Black converse. Ripped jeans. Faded purple shirt, the one with the greyhound, and the fucking hoodie. The dead body is wearing the brown hoodie that Sam got in a Goodwill in Muskegon during a case. Dean finally lifts his eyes and looks at the corpse, his throat so tight he feels like he could choke and die here, too.  
  
Sammy’s mottled, half-carved in face doesn’t even look real, like something out of a horror film, and Dean can’t help but think, _God. Fuck, fucking shit, that’s my brother. That’s my little brother._  
  
Sam’s voice sounds strangled now, and when Dean looks up, the ghost is flickering, a blooming burst of blood spreading across his lower abdomen. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Dean, I didn’t—I thought—”  
  
When Sam reaches out for him, Dean’s hand shoots up and goes through, like fading through mist. Sam starts to cry then, big hiccuping gasps of air being carved into spectral lungs.  
  
“Fuck, I thought I was—”  
  
“You were,” Dean says. He stands and faces Sam; Sam looks so pale, flickering in and out of existence like every other ghost Dean’s ganked. “You are, Sammy. That’s not real. You’re alive, you’re—you’re alive, we’re gonna find Dad, we’re gonna—”  
  
“You have to burn the bones, Dean,” Sam cuts in. He’s so lifelike, Dean feels like he could grab his shoulders and scream in his face. “I can’t stay here, not like this.”  
  
Dean remembers the feeling of bringing Sam out of the fire onto the front lawn of their burning house. He remembers how Sam’s body felt in his arms; how the heat of the flames made him want to sob and scream, if Sammy hadn’t already been doing both. He remembers promising Dad that he would protect Sam, no matter the cost.  
  
Something breaks inside of Dean’s chest.  
  
“I can’t lose you, Sammy,” he struggles to say. It feels like his lungs have given up. “I can’t lose you, not like this.”  
  
The expression on Sam’s face is so soft, so pitying, that it fills Dean’s empty lungs full of visceral rage.  
  
“Please.” The ghost of Sam’s hand grabs the front of his jacket. “Please, Dean.”  
  
Dean closes his eyes and tries to swallow his grief, but it’s so wide and deep that he doesn’t know if he ever will.  
  
\---  
  
Dean waits until the grave is just a smolder of ashes, and then buries it. He gets back to Baby and rests his face in his dirt-covered palms and tries not to cry, tries to get in touch with Dad, leaves a strangled voicemail when he doesn’t pick up.  
  
It takes five demons before Dean finds one that’ll talk. Five summoned and five cast back down, only for the sixth one to open its maw.  
  
“How about making a deal?” it says, sharp teeth grinning.  
  
Dean breathes—once, twice—then nods, and the demon’s eyes glint yellow when the contract is sealed.


End file.
